Ællirsk
Ællirsk is a northern dialect of Old Norse, spoken by the Scandinavian immigrants which in the year 976 accidentally discovered the portal to the parallel world of Farandosÿa. While on an expedition to settle new lands in the far North of Norway, the Viking ship Djarva stranded on an unknown islet east from Jan Mayen, where they set foot on land. On the top of the island was a strange mirror-like machine, which the crew started to observe closely. The captain of the ship, Sveinn inn Svarti, ordered the men to be cautious with the strange object, but one of his men named Haraldr inn Heimski, driven by curiosity, pushed on the teleportation button and space-warped all of the men and women to the wonderful world of Farandosÿa. According to the oral tradition that has since endured, the first words said in Ællirsk would have been: "Ek tér segjavdi, Haraldur Heimskur, eigi á knapp ad trykkja!" which translates roughly as: "I had told thee not to push on the button, Harald thou idiot!" Phonology The alphabet is as follows: The phonological system differs from Old Norse in the following characteristics: * The phoneme /þ/ has become /t/. * The phoneme /ð/ has become /d/. * The intersyllabic grapheme , pronounced as /v/, is written . * The u-Umlaut-rule which in Old Norse transforms an /a/ into /ǫ/ before an /u/ is facultative. Thus: halum or hølum. The i-Umlaut-rule is also facultative. Thus: konir or kønir. * Ællirsk has undergone the Icelandic accent redistribution and follows the modern Icelandic accent rules. * A final /t/ which has been transformed to /ð/ in modern Icelandic has become /d/. The vowel system with the corresponding graphemic notation is: Other sounds & combinations: The consonant system: Graphematics One usually writes Ællirsk in the Latin alphabet, but one can also carve runes in an adapted version of the Elder Futhark. The corresponding runes are: Thus, Ællirsk is written ᚨᛖᛚᛚᛁᚱᛋᚲ. Substantives There are 3 genders: masculine, feminine, neuter. The weak declension has disappeared, so that all nouns are inflect according to the same strong pattern. The following table shows the inflection of the substantives: This can be illustrated with these three examples (stavur, letter; kona, woman; horn, horn): Adjectives The adjectives are declined exactly as the nouns. The weak declension has also disappeared, thus all adjectives are grammatically strong. The ending of the adjective is always identical to that of the noun it goes along with. Thus e.g.: stórar halar ("tall men"); djarvu konu ("(to) an audacious woman"); heimska barna ("of stupid children"). Personal pronouns Verbs The verb inflection is highly simplified compared to Old Norse. Synthetic perfect and plusquamperfect tenses have appeared, the first from the merging of the infinitive + hefi ("I have") (e.g. elska hefi --> elskavi), the latter from the merging of the infinitive + havdi ("he had") (e.g. elska havdi --> elskavdi). This way the perfect infinitive has also appeared (e.g. ad elska hava --> ad elskava). Regular verbs are declined following this pattern (e.g. at elska, "to love"), with the first two rows for the active and the two last for the passive form: This table shows the conjugation of regular verbs in -ar. The other group regular verbs ends in -ir, and corresponds to the Nynorsk -er group. The only difference with the -ar group consists in the Present Simple (Ek tenkir, ek tenkist). Prepositions Prepositions do not differ from Old Norse. Still, some are simplified (e.g. med always takes dative, while it could in some cases take accusative in ON). Adverbs Adverbs are obtained by adding -t to an adjective in its neuter form. Thus, djarv --> djarvt. Determiners The definite determiners have disappeared. Thus, the Old Norse definite forms such as "stafrinn" are rendered as "stavur", just as "stafr" does. One can still use the determiners hinn and the undeclined tad in front of a substantive to mean "this ...", e.g.: hinnur halur, hinnu konu, tad barn. Syntax Ællirsk is an SOV language, yet relatively flexible (just as Latin). For practical reasons, a long or complex object can be placed after the verb. There is Inversion/V2-rule. Thus: Word list The Ællirian national anthem is called "Vakna vína Ælla". Category:Languages